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Comment by sclangdon | Hacker News Reader

>Take a book out of Eddie Hall's playbook who says the exact same thing... And he's literally the strongest man in the world.

Robert Oberst, another WSM competitor also says the same thing and talks about it on the Joe Rogan podcast (#1321 I believe). To quote:

"I went from football to strongman, and in football we never did deadlifts. It was all hang cleans and power cleans, which by the way, quick little tip: if you’re deadlifting to be a better deadlifter fine. If you’re not, (you’re) doing that for deadlift’s sake, don’t fucking do it. The risk to reward ratio is a joke."

"A lot of people are not going to like that I’m saying that. (…) If you go to any NFL gym, any college football gym, any athletics where people are actually getting paid and it matters what they’re doing, they’re not deadlifting. They’re hang cleaning and power cleaning."

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I think the takeaway here might be somewhat obfuscated, so I'd like to clarify. Hang cleans and power cleans essentially have a deadlift as their first submovement, the difference here is in the weight. You can probably deadlift a few times more than you can clean, and that's where the real issue lies — it's a lot easier to get an injury with bigger weights, regardless of the exercise.

For any pro athlete, consistent work is far more important than any one workout, hence avoiding injury is instrumental in success. The same holds true for hobbyists as well, of course, but the topic doesn't get as much focus there since many are self-taught. For consistent progress, work volume is much more crucial than work weight [0], hence doing an exercise with high risk and low volume isn't the best option.

[0] https://sci-fit.net/scientific-recommendations-1/

It’s a fuck load easier to hurt a wrist or elbow doing bad cleans than to hurt your back deadlifting with average technique.

While I kind of see where you're coming from, the statement is a bit of an oxymoron. Doing A with bad form has a higher risk than doing B with average form, for pretty much any A or B you pick. I think deadlifts are a good beginner exercise, and can also serve you well in intermediate lifting for some time, but once the plates rack up, it's better to put your attention elsewhere. I agree that having complex movements for absolute beginners is not a good entry point, but I don't think anyone here is advocating for that.

The technical proficiency needed to make powercleans an effective exercise for strength and power development is ridiculous compared deadlifts, which a good coach can teach you to perform safely in a few hours.

Does it mean he's saying hang and power cleans are safer than deadlift? I've only ever deadlifted, but cleans always looked way more injury prone to me. Am I missing something? (I do deadlift not for the sake of deadlift)

One of the reasons why I don't do weightlifting stuff is that they seem a lot riskier. Same doubt here. These people who recommend weightlifting stuff (I don't mean in any way to discredit Robert Oberst, Eddie Hall... I follow and watch Strongman scene and really enjoy these guys), are they recommending it as "you should get a weightlifting coach and learn the movements properly" or "go to the gym and do power cleans as you go"? I find powerlifting a lot easier to learn alone, youtube only. And less riskier with the progress of increasing load + nonstop learning.

I think the point he's trying to make is even if you know how to deadlift correctly the amount weight involved carries a high risk of injury. Cleans on the other hand involve lower weight and so has a lower risk of injury (assuming you know how to perform it correctly, of course).

Unless you want to make weightlifting a part time hobby, don’t do cleans.

IME it's very easy to get into a constant state of CNS burnout with deadlifts. It takes a lot of discipline to go into a gym and only deadlift upto like 70-75% of your max. The deadlift frankly is easy and fun, it's really only a challenging lift in the high 90s of intensity. So people who deadlift, probably do it too often and at too high intensities such that it takes away from other stuff.

I think one caveat he doesn't mention, is all the pro athletes choosing cleans over deadlifts also have coaches there who are making sure their form is good.

In that case then yeh, it's a more technical lift and provided you're getting good coaching you're less likely to burn out your CNS on a clean than on a deadlift.

Yeah I guess you're onto something there

I don't see why so much fear about DLs (and yes I've hurt myself once or twice - which is less than on other sports btw). And yes if you do it properly it's ok.

But I guess the issue is people trying to overexert and maybe not getting all the cues, and/or it's easy to "slip" and end up doing it with bad form and it requires good coordination (but maybe less than power cleans)

Low intensity, warmup, of course go for a PR once in a while because that's fun and maybe doing it more than 2x week is going to take a toll on your CMS

You need a coach or a lot of discipline to learn how to safely clean. Deadlifts are still great. The previous comment about football teams takes other things into consideration. Like it's difficult to have great form for so many players and cleans are a power exercise. You'll see a lot of football players do trap-bar deadlifts because it's safer.

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